An Englishman of forty years residence in Wales pontificates about politics (slightly off-message), films and trivia. Secretary of Aberavon and Neath Liberal Democrats. Candidate for Neath in the Westminster elections of 1997 & 2017 and the Welsh general election of 2016.

2011 saw another gap on the 19th, but the 20th called for an in/out referendum on the EU. A post later in the month has resonance today, drawing attention as it does to Peter Black's praise for LibDem backbenchers attempting to reverse Labour's cuts to legal aid.

As we are discussing TTIP, which promises to raise quality standards across North America and the EU, and as we are just over a year away from an EU referendum, it is appropriate that the first 19th October entry of this blog is about progress on consumer rights across the EU.

A scan of the Aberavon and Neath Liberal Democrats blog in 2007 reminds us that we are in the week of the eighth anniversary of the Gwyn Hall fire.

Finally, I cannot resist reposting a reply I posted on CIX in October 2005:

> I suspect that your memory of the cuddly nature of "one nation"> conservative govts is growing more rosy with time.My memory is of the "one-nation" administration started by Churchill in 1951 and finishing with Macmillan. I can find fault with many aspects - Eden's military adventure, Macmillan's compromising with special interests over steel investment and the lack of investment in rail transport. Also, at the end, the corruption which seems to be inevitable with any long-running administration destroyed it from within.But that Tory government maintained the NHS and education at the public expense (the system which Butler had created in 1944). It introduced the Clean Air Acts and did more for public housing than Labour had achieved.Nor did it sell the family silver, in Macmillan's later phrase about Thatcherism.